I received an exquisitely detailed explanation from the moderator of rec.crafts.jewelry explaining why my initial reply to an rcm post was delayed because it was also crossposted to the newsgroup he moderates (rcj).
It seemed counterintuitive to me that crossposts to non-moderated newsgroups should get delayed, but here in part is his explanation:
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If any newsgroup, anywhere in the crosspost list (the newsgroups header listing of groups the post goes to) is a moderated group, the post goes FIRST to the moderator of that group. News servers do not seperate postings into separate posts. Rather, they send a posting out on the newsfeeds where any newsgroup on the list will pick up the post and display it, along with the entire original newsgroups listing intact in it's headers.
In order to minimize the chances of misconfigured news servers from posting a message that's not been approved, or perhaps just because the whole setup of newsgroups is almost as old as the internet itself and therefor just not a sophisticated protocol, messages don't propogate at all until they are determined appropriate for all the groups on the list. That means the moderator of the moderated group has to repost the thing with an approval header if it is to appear in all the groups including the moderated one.
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Live and learn....Computers do what we tell them to do, which is not always what we'd want them to do.
Jeff